Yesterday was a bad day. Among other things (email outage during a deadline, etc.), I was visited by Jehovah’s Witnesses and somebody turned the power to my building off again. The power box to my apartment building has a prominent external switch that is unlocked, so whenever some drunk dude passes by at 2am, that dude can turn off the power to the entire shoebox building I’m living in. Then I have to find my flashlight, go outside, and turn it back on. One of these days, I’ll be working on some important project on my computer without saving regularly, and it will go all to shit. Then I’ll have to run outside and get my ass kicked trying to fight whoever cut the power and killed my project.

Otherwise, On and On is currently running on 51% content (as of this entry). I’ll see what happens to that once I finally redesign this site a little bit, like I’ve been meaning to.

While I’ve been on 4 days vacation from my job, I’ve been working on a painting for my sister for Christmas. She regularly commissions large paintings from me on subjects I would not usually paint (like flowers and Peanuts comics), but I’m trying to use these commissions to expand the "mainstream" commercial appeal of my style. I also did this while at an illustration internship for the Kansas City Star. I did some fairly boring family- and dog-related illustrations there. These types of illustrations help me draw and paint subjects other than skulls and bones and wires, for better or worse.

Also, I just watched Carlito’s Way, and found it interesting. I’m assuming it was set in the 70’s, with all the afros and mirror sunglasses.

I’ve noticed Iowa City looks quite different during the day. Especially when it’s sunny out. Very nice indeed.

Lately I’ve gotten back into comix—Peter Bagge, Crumb, Julie Doucet, Lynda Barry, etc. This is because I now have time to read them and the library has a pretty good selection. I need to read some Los Bros Hernandez. Everything I read says they’re awesome, but I haven’t read their stuff yet. So I’m looking forward to that event.

I got my scanner working nicely after a few months of not dealing with it, so here’s a sketchbook image of a dude and crossbones from today: